The First Witch
by Powersocke Prime
Summary: When they first came back from the stars, they found a lone girl walking naked and helpless through the wilderness. She was cast out for defying her village's religion. In a curious turn of fate, that which came from the heavens imparted its knowledge unto her.


She walked as her primal brain pondered with worry, for survival was at stake. After having left the squalid village wherein an unhallowed procession was conducted, she wondered how she would not starve.

Having rejected the furtive rites of her kin at an early age, when she grew older she was not able to contain her disdain any longer. She spat on their high priest with disgust when the procession began and was thereunto forced into exile for the blasphemy she had committed.

They bereaved her of all her possessions as punishment and so, she trod the earth alone, naked and unarmed, her path illuminated by the stars that shone down from the night sky.

And as she gazed up at the starry vault she wondered what these lights truly were. What the glistening splendour meant whenever the sun shrouded itself in shadow. For she did not, _could_ not, know that the dawn of man had only just begun. And that the Earth she wandered was far more ancient than her barely sapient mind could fathom. She was not aware that in aeons past, there came things not of this Earth. Things far older than the planet she inhabited. They came from the stars and settled the lands in ages past.

But as she trod near the woods, she felt something. An emotion of primordial fear and deathly premonition erected its fortress inside her weak mind, for she fancied that betwixt the oaks and birch trees, within the shadows, there lurked and crept something. Not a predatory animal, but something else. Something that left this dimension long ago. Something that came back when the rituals were conducted in these early days.

She sought shelter from the open sky and went into the dark thicket of leaves and branches, of tall grass and wild shrubs. And through the shades that the high trees cast, she espied a small grove, its quaint pond reflecting the moon's lustre invitingly.

She approached the pond and knelt down to drink from it. And it was there where _it_ first manifested into our existence. As she drank and swallowed, a figure appeared just beneath the water's glistening surface. In fright, she took a few steps back and watched as a robed figure clad in pale blue, roughly sewn, hooded vestments emerged from the pool. Its likeness obscured by the cowl, the two sleeves of its garments held together in front of its chest.

Meanwhile, the world around her appeared to darken when the figure took a few steps forward, the cloth dripping wet from the water.

It separated the sleeves and out from one of them came not an arm but an appendage of undulating night. It stretched continually in her direction, like the lengthening shadows of the sun's rays that formed in the morning.

She avoided the partly shapeless limb for a while and attempted flight when she noticed that the roots and branches circumjacent to her had closed, sealing her way out of the grove. And she ran, her heart pounding ever faster, the adrenaline devouring her consciousness overtaken by festering anguish of a thing she did not know.

At length, her body succumbed to fatigue. To her terror, she realized that all her attempts at avoidance of the ever longer stretching extremity were fruitless. And so, in resignation, she stood before the robed being, bracing for whatever calamity might befall her.

And as the seeping quasi-limb's jetty black tip touched her forehead, everything changed. Her hitherto conceived existence was null, her senses were void as her mind shattered into a trillion pieces. Her spirit was pulled into the limitless gulfs of space. Her soul witnessed the yawning depths of the abyss.

The thing imparted knowledge unto her. Knowledge her species would not acquire until hundreds of thousands of years later. Her very fabric was flung into endless pits of unknown emptiness. Innumerable revelations were made manifest in but a few seconds as her horizon broadened farther than any man's horizon ever would be in past, future or present. Time was suddenly nonlinear and she saw and felt all that was, is and is to be.

Her mind now comprehended what was inconceivable before. And the trillion pieces of her innermost nature realigned to shew an image of the endless cosmos and realities, the dimensions and worlds of all things.

In the blink of an eye it was over. The alien figure in its pale blue robe dissolved, melting and disappearing. But queerly, she knew that it would happen before it took place. She had seen it right before the nameless thing she curiously knew the name of released its grasp. Now, all that was left of it were the garments it wore, spread out on the ground of the grove.

She took the cloth into her hands, donning it over her naked body. She obscured her head within the hood, stuffing her long, dark hair in the back. Her sentience had awoken and præternatural powers coursed through her veins. She realized everything. And now held the might to subdue her punishers.

With a swift motion she opened the roots and branches that were in her way to step out of the woods to go back to the village of ghastly religion.

Soon, she stood before the throng of humans who danced and chanted in feverish howlings, grunts and shrieks. The apparent leaders of the group called for silence at her advent, halting the detestable rite. Now, all the eyes rested on her. With suspicion and contempt did they inspect the woman, already holding up their crude tools of murder and sacrifice.

But before the mass of disfigured men and women could attack, she cast off her robe, exposing herself to the crooked people of her hamlet. And before they could utter threats and curses, her hair grew several meters long, slowly solidifying into an amalgamation of wriggling, black flesh and moving tentacles. Her white skin shone brightly in the moon's luminous grandeur as her body was lifted up into the air.

The priests and followers were puzzled and frightened but attempted assault nonetheless. But it was in vain, for each assailant was consumed by a myriad of mounds on her morphed strands of hair. They were eaten alive by the things that crept from her scalp.

Countless eyes opened their lids amidst the seething, bubbling blackness of her own creation, watching each of the miscreant's steps.

After their brothers and sisters had fallen and the vile clerus was no more, the people of the village resigned to compliance to their new goddess. And she would teach them many things and she would educate them about the world. Imparting her knowledge by means of speech and earthly language.

And she would write the first tome of many volumes that would follow. Formulating scriptures and books of all that her otherworldly mind contained.

Building of a great structure was ordered in which this knowledge should reside. And when the time was right, she would return to preach the callous baptism of the void. Unto the Earth she would come when her slumber ebbed. And the first witch would enforce her reign over many yet again.


End file.
